Dirk van Zyl, 68; Had '71 Transplant

Published: July 7, 1994

CAPE TOWN, July 6—
Dirk van Zyl, who lived 23 years after a heart transplant -- longer than any other recipient so far -- died today in a nursing home. He was 68.

Mr. van Zyl had recently suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed on his left side, and his death was not caused by heart failure, said his son, Coenie van Zyl.

In 1971, Mr. van Zyl received a new heart in an operation performed by the pioneering surgeon Dr. Christiaan N. Barnard. He was the sixth transplant patient for Dr. Barnard, who performed the world's first heart transplant in 1967 at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town.

"He was spared for us for another 23 years," Coenie van Zyl, 30, said of his father. In an interview with The Associated Press in 1992 on the 25th anniversary of the first transplant, Mr. van Zyl said he always encouraged people considering transplant surgery to take the risk.

During surgery, his heart stopped beating and the anesthetist said he was dead. But Dr. Barnard revived him and completed the transplant.

Mr. van Zyl, who was white, received the heart of a mixed-race man who had died in a fall from a tree. Under apartheid laws in force at the time of the operation, people of mixed race would have been unable to receive treatment in the same hospital where Mr. Van Zyl was helped.

About 3,500 transplants are performed each year, mostly in the United States. The survival rate for the first year exceeds 90 percent.

His wife died in 1993. He is survived by two sons and two grandchildren.